MS feels like they are ahead of Sony

[Dr. Pezus]

add to the list a commitment to BC that above expectations!

https://blog.playstation.com/2020/10/09/ps4-games-on-ps5-your-top-questions-answered/

But I thought it would only include 200 games

[kitler53]

But I thought it would only include 200 games

you did.  and your expectations have been exceeded.   

[Xevross]

Sony are definitely ahead again for now in terms of marketing and hype. It feels like for the time that's mattered Sony has been ahead for most of it.

When this thread was made it was still so early, people don't really care at that point as there's still so much of this gen left. Sony's June event was the first huge thing that really kicked off the next gen hype cycle and Xbox have barely been ahead in that time, probably just for a few weeks last month.

Both companies have done well this time, no big blunders and no big disadvantage for either. It's going to come down to stock and games for the first couple years of sales, unlike last gen when PS4 had a huge opening lead due to all the known reasons.

[kitler53]

no ps blog post yesterday detailing important details of ps5.   you're losing me sony..

[the-pi-guy]

It feels like it's happening again.  

Sony shutting down the PS3/PSP/PSV stores, which has reaffirmed that MS has the better plan for backwards compatibility, MLB the Show going to Gamepass.  I think it's fairly expected that the stores got shut down. And it makes sense that MLB the show is happening.  It's not really Sony's IP.  

It doesn't really feel like Sony is making really bad decisions, it just feels like MS is making unprecedented decisions.  
I can't find the tweet at the moment, but there was a tweet that said MS is making hell freeze over.  Buying Zenimax, and this, kind of feel like hell freezing over kind of moves.  

And there's also Japan Studio.  I think it's understandable, but it does feel like a bad decision.  

MS is expanding and diversifying into other countries and genres, they're pushing value and Gamepass, they're improving backwards compatibility.

I think the biggest issue though is that Sony is so slow to respond to criticism.  Even when nothing is actually wrong, the best case scenario seems to be a blog post written days afterwards.  We saw this with the BC issue last year.  There was the Ray tracing issue the year before.  Where it was like 6 months for Sony to respond that yes, when we said there was ray tracing, we meant there was hardware acceleration for ray tracing.  

I think Sony is still winning on the games front at least for me.  But everything outside of that.  It feels like MS is several steps ahead of them, and it feels like Sony would rather step back instead of forward.

[kitler53]

yeah, what Pi said.

sony (to-date) is massively better than MS on actually making games.  ...and as nintendo shows content is king.  you can be a litteral shitshow on everything else but if your games are the games people want to play then you'll be a market leader.

all the same,.. ms is killing it on the "everthing else" perspective and if all of the aquisitions aren't mismanage xbox could take that advantage away from sony.  i really do perfer sony right now but i really fear they are going to lose everything this gen.   i could honestly see MS just buying out all of sony's studio/backlog in 10 years when sony realizes that's all they can do with playstation...

[Legend]

Yeah I'm glad I own a series x.

Not because PS5 is bad, but this gen isn't clear cut like last.

[BananaKing]

Yeah... Sony is releasing more games, Sony is expanding their studios and IPs at a successful and steady pace. MS has yet to prove they can manage studios properly. In fact, 3 gens in, and they to go on a buying spree worth billions to be able to come close to Sony or Nintendo with their first party. Their brand is stronger, their market share is stronger, their profits are more, and they are established in more countries than xbox, specially in the middle East and Asia, which are becoming bigger and bigger markets.

MS's buying spree can hurt Sony, like kitler said before they arent adding games to themselves, but taking them away from Sony. But Sony needs to just continue to expand their first party and IPs. They need to be a bit more aggressive now since MS bought Bethesda, but they dont need to panic. Thinking Playstation will be dead in 10 years is just silly to me, its a core pillar for Sony now, who are making billions each year too, and will spend a lot to grow and support the brand if they feel the need too

[Xevross]

Well I was reading the similar Era thread and saw someone post this video:

I think its interesting because you'd expect something like this to be a clickbaity fanboy thing but the guy seems very genuine and sad about what's going on.

Xbox is just better than Playstation right now, straight up. PS has had more and better first party games for the last few years and looks like it will for the next few months but that's basically the only advantage I see with it.

This is a hole that Sony really need to dig themselves out of. The playstation brand is fully attached to their console, but their console is straight up worse than their competitor and they're risking losing a lot of market share if things don't change. Xbox could eat into PS's console market share and maybe even overtake it in a few years time, whilst also not even being reliant on the console sales for its success.

Playstation NEEDS to be a successful console with the strategy they've gone for, so all these fuckups and poor design choices really are baffling.

[the-pi-guy]

Part of me is a little irritated, because I feel like I'm getting sucked into the hype/deflate news cycle.

Like oh something good happened, way to go Sony. Something bad happened, Sony is in trouble.  Which isn't something I feel like I've had before.  

Sony made a lot of good moves the past 10 days:

- new Multiplayer partnership
- keeping the store open
- apparently looking into the CMOS issue
- PS Now update
- great Returnal previews
- reaffirming cloud and VR
- new update brought an okay number of new features.


And a different part of me feels like this reaffirms the biggest issue Sony has is their communication.

The second biggest issue is they've been slow with some things.  PS5 still doesn't support VRR and it doesn't seem to be coming soon.  


Part of me wonders if the Zenimax acquisition is also part of the issue.  It may have set the scale of the direction that it feels like Sony should be taking.  

I guess to say I feel like Sony will do what we want them to do, just not on the timescale that we hope it happens.  

[kitler53]

Part of me is a little irritated, because I feel like I'm getting sucked into the hype/deflate news cycle.

Like oh something good happened, way to go Sony. Something bad happened, Sony is in trouble.  Which isn't something I feel like I've had before.  

Sony made a lot of good moves the past 10 days:

- new Multiplayer partnership
- keeping the store open
- apparently looking into the CMOS issue
- PS Now update
- great Returnal previews
- reaffirming cloud and VR
- new update brought an okay number of new features.


And a different part of me feels like this reaffirms the biggest issue Sony has is their communication.

The second biggest issue is they've been slow with some things.  PS5 still doesn't support VRR and it doesn't seem to be coming soon.  


Part of me wonders if the Zenimax acquisition is also part of the issue.  It may have set the scale of the direction that it feels like Sony should be taking.  

I guess to say I feel like Sony will do what we want them to do, just not on the timescale that we hope it happens.  

it's a lot scale though right.    MS put their computer OS onto a console and that means some of their OS features are coming for the grander windows teams and not just the xbox team.    i'm sure sony has a big team for their OS but MS probably has an order of magnitude more resources working on it even if it is just perhepherially.  

OS is MS's strength and so far hasn't show they have the creative chops to make even a decent game with most of their studios.   only forza seems to review consistently well.

Games is sony's strength.   they can do a decent OS but they'll always be on their heels compared to MS.

[Xevross]

Part of me is a little irritated, because I feel like I'm getting sucked into the hype/deflate news cycle.

Like oh something good happened, way to go Sony. Something bad happened, Sony is in trouble.  Which isn't something I feel like I've had before.  

Sony made a lot of good moves the past 10 days:

- new Multiplayer partnership
- keeping the store open
- apparently looking into the CMOS issue
- PS Now update
- great Returnal previews
- reaffirming cloud and VR
- new update brought an okay number of new features.


And a different part of me feels like this reaffirms the biggest issue Sony has is their communication.

The second biggest issue is they've been slow with some things.  PS5 still doesn't support VRR and it doesn't seem to be coming soon.  


Part of me wonders if the Zenimax acquisition is also part of the issue.  It may have set the scale of the direction that it feels like Sony should be taking.  

I guess to say I feel like Sony will do what we want them to do, just not on the timescale that we hope it happens.  

I think you got it. The biggest issue is communication. They should keep some good news steadily coming but they keep dumping all their news at once and then being silent for ages. With the way modern news cycles and forums and whatnot its a really bad strategy.

And yeah the Zenimax acquisition is a big one, without that it would still feel like Sony are miles ahead as xbox have no answer for PS studios.

[the-pi-guy]

If Sony had announced that they were working with Haven studios and Firewalk studios the week they announced that they were restructuring Japan Studio, I think that news would have felt a little different.

It would have still stung for a lot of people, but for others it may have felt more like Sony was branching out in different ways instead of just shutting down a studio.


MS's direction is very clear cut.  We know what their goals are.
But we don't know right now with Sony.  

[Legend]

I'll be a broken record but it feels like PS3 in many ways. Sony was still amazing during that gen, even if they stumbled from time to time.

[Dr. Pezus]

I'll be a broken record but it feels like PS3 in many ways. Sony was still amazing during that gen, even if they stumbled from time to time.

Well except the hardware is much better (for devs) and price much lower.